Iron Council tells the story of New Crobuzon caught in the midst of a proto-civil war. The militia mentioned as more of a secret police/paramilitary force in the first two books, now openly walks the city streets. They arrest dissidents and send them to be Remade into horrible creations that are the embodiments of their punishments. During this time, Weather Wrightby and the TRT, a monopolist and imperialist company begin the project of building a transcontinental railroad to tame the wild lands west of New Crobuzon. The workers of the train, after being horribly mistreated, steal the train and become feral. They become a "Perpetual Train" forever laying track ahead and tearing up the rails behind, always on the run from the militia. Iron Council is their story.
People have correctly declared that this is Miéville's most overtly political book. It's easy to see the surface themes of labor vs corporate greed, governmental corruption, and to borrow from America's history -- westward expansion and Manifest Destiny. But of course all these political themes are given the Miéville treatment. They are weirded. Various xenian races make up the ranks of the railroad workers: humans, cactus-men, scarab-headed kherpi, etc. Instead of just employing technological horrors, the militia possesses thaumaturges, elementalists, genetically-engineered beasts designed for war. It's very weird, and it's awesome. I must admit that the idea of Iron Council -- the Perpetual Train -- is tied with Armada the floating pirate city for the title of "Coolest Idea in the Bas-Lag books."
I for one was not turned off by the overtly socialist political agenda woven into the narrative. That's not where the book is lacking. It's not in the ideas, but in the execution.
The narrative is fragmented and relies heavily on flashbacks. There are two main storylines that make up the novel. The first one is told mostly from the point of view of Cutter, a shop-owner turned insurrectionist and Iron Council seeker. He and some comrades follow Judah Low into the wilderness to find the Iron Council to convince them to come back to New Crobuzon to support the labor uprising. The second thread follows the young insurrectionist Ori as he falls into an anarchist gang led by the enigmatic, bull-headed, Toro.
The problem with these storylines is that neither of their main characters are particularly likable or even noticeable. Ori has nothing about him that stands out. He is simply an angry young man who feels like the other subversive groups are talking too much and not acting. But that's it. There's nothing more to his character. We learn nothing about his history, nothing about family or even friends. He's mostly a blank slate with a type of disenfranchised youth superimposed on top of it.
And then on the other hand, Cutter is equally lacking in personality. He's described as a cynic, but really he just comes across as grumpy. The only thing that was interesting about him is his homosexuality. But the thing is, because his possessive love for Judah Low is the only character trait we really get to experience, it comes across more as a "defining trait" rather than just something that is part of a fully realized character. His sexual orientation comes to define him more than anything, and I don't think that is what Miéville intended for Cutter. (Yes I know that terms like authorial intention are nebulous at best and dangerous at worst) Still credit must be given to Miéville for including openly homo- or bi-sexual characters in the normally hyper-heteronormative world of science fiction and fantasy.
These problems come across more like executional problems rather than conceptual ones. The ideas are there in Iron Council. They're big, they're thought-provoking, they're challenging. For example, after over 100 pages of less than exciting opening, the reader is treated to an extended flashback that details how Judah came to be a part of the formation of the Iron Council. At this point, the physical structure of the novel ends up mirroring the thematic ideas. The Iron Council shapes itself into a collective, commune-like society, with power being shared among the citizens. During these flashback sequences, the numbering of the chapters disappears. They form a collective rather than a linear sequence. Each chapter in this section is equal to its sisters (to use the term the Iron Councilors use to address each other). None of the chapters are tethered to the old regime (the numeric sequence that preceded the flashback) just in the same way that the Perpetual Train is separated from New Crobuzon -- the capitalist city-state that birthed it.
Like I said, the book is challenging, and that's a good thing. It's just sad that the story-telling aspect of the novel has to suffer as a result. The writing style is undoubtedly Miéville-esque, but a little less ponderous than the previous two Bas-Lag novels. He still has a gift for using language and inventing words that rely on the pure sensuousness of sound to carry their meaning across, but overall the prose is a little more streamlined...in parts. However there are sections where traditional grammar gets thrown out the window in favor of adding weight to the thematic materials. Towards the end of the book when the laborers of New Crobuzon have risen against the government, there are numerous pitched battles in the streets, but they aren't told from the point of view of any one character. They're given a more omniscent narrator. I believe that this is to enhance the collectivist nature of the insurrectionists. While this is a noble goal, it makes these chapters home to sections and paragraphs that rely more on "telling" rather than "showing." As a result, it slows the pacing and saps the energy from the novel.
Some might get upset with the ending, but I believe it fits perfectly. Choice and intervention are two thematic threads that run through the entire novel, and it fits that they play a huge role in the ending. I don't want to spoil the exact events, but the first time I read the ending, I stopped and said to myself, "That was cool." If the story can still create that kind of knee-jerk, emotional response in me, then it definitely is doing something right.
The book raises so many more questions than I've even attempted to tackle in this review: How does history function -- example "to drag history out and back." Is history a form of intervention? How does intervention function between two different states of being -- regarding the creation of golems. And then finally there are questions about the functions of time itself -- especially since I believe that golem-man Judah Low is able to manipulate both chronic and kairotic time.
This is the longest and most in-depth review I've written so far, and there are still things I'm not covering. Clearly this is a novel that requires essays to be written about it. It practically begs for them. However, as a pure piece of entertainment it is flawed. There are pacing issues, character issues, and portions with an over-reliance on telling rather than showing. Still if you consider yourself a fan of Miéville's work, you owe it to yourself to read this book. Despite its challenging ideas, there are still plenty of monsters within its pages.
Side note: The copy I own is an ARC, and I don't know if the retail copy contains a map of New Crobuzon like the one in Perdido Street Station, but it is a necessity when reading this book. The chapters that take place within the city and during the uprising are next to impossible to visualize without the aid of a map.
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